Before the Bangladesh tour, Tom Latham last played a T20I in November 2017. New Zealand are proud despite the loss to Tom Latham, Latham last played a T20I on January 19, 2019, when he scored 110 off 60 balls for Canterbury against Central Districts in Super Smash.
Two years later :-
Amid a pandemic, Tom is now the captain of the underpowered New Zealand tour team, which scored 60 runs in the first T20I on Wednesday. In the second match, Latham played the role that regular captain Kane Williamson often performs for New Zealand: stabilize the ship. Latham scored his maiden T20I fifty and nearly saved New Zealand on another turner in Dhaka, while his team continued to sink.
Latham bounced himself at No 3 and came to bat to chase down a tight target of 142 when opener Rachin Ravindra hit a Shakib Al Hasan dart so hard that he lost his shape and scored 10 runs off nine balls. Made out.
Rachin Ravindra had similarly arrived at a leg-side clip in the first T20I and offered a simple return catch, falling for a duck on debut. On Wednesday, New Zealand’s entire batting line-up got into things and came out brilliantly. Two days later, Latham showed his teammates how to bat in the difficult conditions of Dhaka, in a calm, unhurried fashion.
He was either completely ahead or just behind the spinners and was risky against the fast bowlers, even though Mustafizur Rahman and Mohammad Saifuddin regularly cut their pace and bowled across the pitch. After scoring 23 off 22 balls, he delayed his short-arm jab against Saifuddin Cutter and built his position to ping the ball to the midwicket boundary.
Cleared the boundary of midwicket :-
Latham then delays his slog-sweep against another slow delivery from Saifuddin and clears the boundary of midwicket. However, there was an accumulation of fours in the 18th over between deep midwicket and wide long-on off Mustafizur.
Came to Mustafizur vs Latham in the final over, with New Zealand needing 19. After Rahman rolled one cutter after another, he inadvertently missed his length and sent a beamer fifth ball, which was bowled by Latham over the fine leg boundary. To hit a six off the last ball.
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Rahman digs the cutter for the last ball and delivers a hard-length on-pace delivery keeping Latham only on single. Still, Latham was particularly pleased with this, and promoted Bangladesh as they folded for their joint-lowest T20I total in the week.
“Yeah, obviously it was a great game and it was [good] to take it to the last over, seeing how things were in the first game,” Latham told the host broadcaster in a post-match appearance. “For us, it’s about trying to learn from what we did in that first game and I thought we did really well, often with the bat we were able to build partnerships and make it to the last over with a chance to win.
Partnerships work a little differently :-
“Partnerships work a little differently, obviously, my role was to try and bat through the innings and the others were able to try and be a little bit more explosive and that’s going to happen in T20 cricket. And to learn from what happened in the first T20… I’m really proud of the guys. The way we managed to change things around.”
Rachin said that at one point New Zealand believed Latham could actually pull off a robbery during the death. “Obviously it’s humiliating to win those close games, but it shows the improvement we made between game one and game two and getting to the final ball,” Latham said.
“Obviously the best to Tommy Latham. It was an incredible innings, it was unique to watch and he showed how to bat in these conditions and the guidance he showed was unbelievable.
“He looked in such a pun, so we were all like: ‘Okay, this could be here.’ The way he was working alone and hitting boundaries and it seemed he really knew his illusions, which we can all take and learn from.”
With the series in place, it is now up to the other New Zealand batsmen to follow Latham’s blueprint.
